catling

From cat +‎ -ling. Compare kitling, catkin. According to the OED, the sense of a surgical knife may be an independent word.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkætlɪŋ/

catling (plural catlings)

1. (archaic) A little cat; a kitten.
   • a. 1649, William Drummond of Hawthornden, Phillis:

     For never cat nor catling I shall find, / But mew shall they in Pluto's palace blind.

   • 1992, Yves Navarre, A Cat's Life, page 32:

     Abel was a lover of the worst type: when he was with a catling he hardly ever laughed . If the catling came back again, he never did.

   • 2014, Fritz Leiber, The Swords of Lankhmar:

     "Have you seen the ship's catling, Little Mistress?" he called, crossing to Hisvet, the kitten almost hidden in his big hands.

   • 2021, Christopher Buehlman, The Blacktongue Thief Sneak Peek:

     The brewer's wife was heard to say She'd cleave the catling's tail in twae So Bully raoed and ran away

2. catgut; a catgut string
   • c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iii]:

     but, I am sure, none, unless the fiddler Apollo get his sinews to make catlings on.

   • 2018, Pietro Greco, Galileo Galilei, The Tuscan Artist, page 76:

     If you have a two-string lute, where one string is made with iron and the other with catling (made of sheep guts), and you tune it so that it produces the best unison, you shall lose it as soon as you move the keys, while looking for a new common chord. In practical terms, if an iron string and a catling string with the same length vibrate in unison , this does not mean they will do the same if you cut them by half .

   • 2023, Colin Timms, Music, Books and Theatre in Eighteenth-Century Exton:

     Festing's bill suggests that a catling could be used to make or improve the handle of a bow.

3. (surgery) A double-edged, sharp-pointed dismembering knife.
   • 1825, Sir Astley Cooper, Frederick Tyrrell, The Lectures of Sir Astley Cooper, page 323:

     the amputation is competed by passing the catling between the separated bones, dividng the flexor tendons, &c., and forming a flap of about equal size to the superior from the integument on the sole of the foot.

   • 1852, Joseph Pancoast, A Treatise on Operative Surgery:

     The operator […] grasping the soft parts immediately below, raises them so as to facilitate the passage of a double-edged knife or catling across the face of the bones […]

   • 1878, Maryland Medical Journal: Medicine and Surgery‎^[1], volume 4, page 284:

     […] after Esmarch we hold back the bloody torrent which once gushed forth after the catling; and Listerizing with Lister's spray we bar all passage into gaping wounds of motes that people the sunbeam and breed havoc in the tract of the sanguineous life stream.

• (knife): catlin

• kitling

• talcing